In dispensing soaps, lotions and other skin and hand care materials of a flowable nature, it is well known in the art to provide wall-mounted dispensers with replaceable cartridges. Generally speaking, these dispensers include a back panel which is secured to the wall or other vertical surface and a front cover hingedly secured to the back plate, usually adjacent its bottom edge, so as to be movable between open and closed positions. In this fashion, with the cover closed, a chamber is formed within the interior of the dispenser.
This chamber within the interior of the dispenser receives a removable cartridge of some sort which contains a quantity of the material to be dispensed and, of course, the cartridge is replaceable when its contents are exhausted.
Also, in general, presently, the most common type of replacement cartridges are the so-called bag-in-box type. These include a box or carton fabricated from cardboard or some other suitable material which has front, back and sidewalls and is generally cubical in outside configuration. Within the box is a collapsible bag of material with a tube and pump arrangement affixed thereto which can be used in cooperating with the dispenser to dispense the material. The boxes or cartons generally have a tearaway portion on the front wall so that the tube and pump can be released once the box is placed inside the dispenser.
Generally, the dispensers are intended to be more or less permanently mounted on walls in restrooms and adjacent other areas in which individuals are likely to require soap, lotion, or other materials of that general nature.
Inasmuch as the dispensers per se become a more or less permanent part of the fixtures in the washroom or other area in which they are mounted, it is desirable to provide them with a pleasing aesthetic appearance. In recent years, dispensers of this type have been aesthetically designed so as to present such an appearance and this often includes what might be called streamlining. That is, the front cover is generally sloped from its bottom to its top, provided with rounded edges and otherwise designed so as to present a pleasing visual effect.
The difficulty encountered in practice, however, is that some of the interior space of the dispenser is wasted. That is, due to the streamlined configuration of the dispenser and particularly the cover thereof, the size of the box and thus the size and amount of material contained in the usual cubical box is limited so as to avoid interference with the tapered, sloping or otherwise contoured surface of the cover when the cover is closed.
Accordingly, it has been found that it is advantageous to provide a box which more or less conforms to the contours of the dispenser cover and in this way increases the volume of material which can be packaged in each box. This enables more efficient utilization of the interior space available and has the advantage of reducing the number of times the dispenser needs to be serviced with a refill.